After carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) is estimated to be one of the largest contributors to global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 30% of all anthropogenic methane emission occurs from oil and natural gas operations in U.S. This corresponds to 1.65% of natural gas production in U.S. There are certain studies that put that estimate at around 2.8% of the production. There are also studies indicating that methane gas emission occurs at a much higher rate at production site (well heads). In those studies, methane emission is estimated to be anywhere from 6% to 17% of production, depending on the location of the study.
Hence, from an environmental perspective, it is very important to identify and quantify sources of methane emission, so that corrective steps can be taken. Additionally, from an economic standpoint of oil and natural gas producers, knowing the sources and amount of methane leaks can potentially lead to steps to capture more of lost product, and hence more profit.
It is therefore very important to identify and quantify the amount of methane leaking from oil and gas operations, as well as from the well heads.
Some known technologies for detecting methane leaks involve using an infra-red (IR) camera to image well pads and qualitatively look for methane emission signatures to identify a location of a leak. Using this technology, it may not be possible to quantify the leak rate. Additionally, the cost of these IR cameras is of the order of tens of thousands of dollars, making this solution cost prohibitive to be deployed at every well pad. One attempted solution to reduce this cost is to move the IR cameras from well pad to well pad. This process is time consuming and expensive to monitor all the production well pads.